Many reaction processes produce off-gas streams containing unreacted components. The manufacture of chemicals from petrochemical feedstocks, such as ethylene, propylene, butene, or butane, is an important group of processes of this type. The off-gas streams from such processes are difficult to treat in ways that are both technically and economically practical. As a result, the off-gases are often sent to a fuel line at best, or purged from the process and simply vented or flared, causing atmospheric pollution and wasting resources.
There remains a need for better treatment techniques.
Gas separation by means of membranes is a well-established technology. In an industrial setting, a total pressure difference is usually applied between the feed and permeate sides, typically by compressing the feed stream or maintaining the permeate side of the membrane under partial vacuum.
It is known in the literature that a driving force for transmembrane permeation may be supplied by passing a sweep gas across the permeate side of the membranes, thereby lowering the partial pressure of a desired permeant on that side to a level below its partial pressure on the feed side. In this case, the total pressure on both sides of the membrane may be the same, or there may be additional driving force provided by keeping the total feed pressure higher than the total permeate pressure.
Using a sweep gas has most commonly been proposed in connection with air separation to make nitrogen or oxygen-enriched air, or with dehydration. Examples of patents that teach the use of a sweep gas on the permeate side to facilitate air separation include U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,240,471; 5,500,036; and 6,478,852. Examples of patents that teach the use of a sweep gas in a dehydration process include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,931,070; 4,981,498; and 5,641,337.
Configuring the flow path within the membrane module so that the feed gas and sweep stream flow, as far as possible, countercurrent to each other is also known and taught, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,681,433 and 5,843,209.